In Kyrgyzstan, injustice and torture in Askarov case

Azimjon Askarov, an investigative reporter and human rights
defender, had ended careers and embarrassed officials time and again with his
reporting on law enforcement abuses in southern Kyrgyzstan. When ethnic unrest
broke out in June 2010, authorities struck back with a vengeance. A CPJ special report by
Muzaffar Suleymanov

Published June 12, 2012

NEW YORK
Ethnically motivated beatings, arsons, and killings were sweeping
through southern Kyrgyzstan, and Azimjon Askarov was exhausted. It was early on
June 13, 2010, and Askarov, a prominent reporter and human rights defender, had
been up all night documenting the unrest that pitted ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks
against one another, a conflagration that ignited three days before in Osh and
was now racing through his village of Bazar-Korgon.

At 5 a.m., unable to stay awake, Askarov asked a companion to
drive him home. About four hours later, Askarov recounts today in an interview
for CPJ, his wife awakened him with news: A police officer had just been killed.
Askarov roused himself, grabbed his camera, and headed out, going first to his
office and then to the scene of the killing on the nearby Bishkek-to-Osh
highway, a mountainous four-lane thoroughfare where hundreds of ethnic Uzbeks
had massed in an effort to block what they perceived to be Kyrgyz efforts to
move aggressors and weapons into the region.

The situation was tense as he arrived, Askarov recalls, as police
were firing into the crowd and a civilian, bleeding, dropped to the ground in
front of him. In all, three civilians were killed in the village that day along
with the officer, the human rights group Kylym Shamy
said. By the time the violence subsided in Bazar-Korgon on June 15, at least 19
were dead, more than 130 were injured, and more than 400 buildings had been torched, according to accounts from the
government, news outlets, and human
rights groups. Askarov was among those keeping a close tally, visiting the
morgue to identify bodies, interviewing local residents and officials, keeping
a diary with his extensive notes, shooting videos, and taking photographs.

But two days after the confrontation on the highway, Askarov was himself in
police custody, where he would endure prolonged brutality during which officers
“beat me like a soccer ball.” Today,
two years later, Askarov, a 61-year-old Bazar-Korgon native of Uzbek descent,
is serving a life prison term on charges that he was complicit in the officer’s
murder and had committed a series of other anti-state crimes. The conviction has
been challenged by the government’s own ombudsman’s office, and Askarov’s
lawyers are now preparing a complaint to be filed with the U.N. Human Rights
Committee.

A reporter who exposed
abuses

The case against Askarov boils down to three broad
allegations: that he incited the crowd gathered on the highway to kill Myktybek
Sulaimanov, a police officer, sometime after 8 a.m. on June 13, 2010; that, a
day earlier, he fired up another crowd to take a local mayor hostage, a crime that
did not actually take place; and that he possessed 10 bullets, which were found
in his home during a police raid marked by irregularities.

By September 2010, Askarov had been convicted on the thinnest
of evidence, the testimony of self-interested police and public officials who
claimed he made remarks to incite crowds to violence. Yet Askarov was not
observed participating in any act of violence and, aside from the disputed
bullets, was not linked to any crime by any other evidence. His trial was
conducted in an atmosphere of intense intimidation of the defense—Askarov and
his lawyer were assaulted during the proceedings—and a general climate of fear
among the Uzbek population, all of which served to deter would-be defense
witnesses. People who could have provided exculpatory testimony—including
Askarov’s wife and neighbors, whose accounts contradicted those of police—were
ignored by authorities and too frightened to testify.

Police and prosecutors had plenty of reason to target
Askarov. During years of investigative reporting on law enforcement corruption
and human rights abuses in southern Kyrgyzstan, Askarov had ended careers and
embarrassed local officials time and again. His reporting on the June 2010
ethnic unrest, which included photos and videos, provided yet another reason
for authorities to fear him.

“Certainly Bazar-Korgon police and prosecutors benefited from
my imprisonment—they’re the most criminal among Kyrgyzstan’s law enforcement
agencies,” Askarov said from Penal Colony 47 outside Bishkek in comments
recorded for CPJ by his lawyer, Yevgeniya Krapivina. “I always obstructed their
corrupt work. ... They hated me.”

Askarov was an artist by training, specializing in landscape
painting, but he was far better known for his work in human rights and
investigative journalism. He founded the human rights group, Vozdukh (Air), and
in articles published in his group’s bulletin, Pravo Dlya Vsekh (Justice for All), and on the regional news
websites Golos Svobody (Voice of
Freedom) and Ferghana News,he exposed abuses and got results.

In 2003, Askarov’s reporting led to the release of a local
woman who was repeatedly raped by police and male detainees during her
seven-month-long pretrial detention. More muckraking reports followed. In 2004,
for example, Askarov investigated the case of a local man who died after being
beaten in police custody, local journalists reported. Most notably, in
2007, he derailed the prosecution of a local couple charged in the murder of a
woman named Mairam Zairova. Askarov tracked down Zairova in Uzbekistan, where
she was very much alive, and produced her in court. With the corpse
misidentified, the prosecution’s theory collapsed and the couple was cleared.
The regional prosecutor was sacked because of the botched case, another in a
series of disciplinary actions and dismissals of police officials and
prosecutors stemming directly from Askarov’s investigative reporting, Daniil
Kislov, editor of Ferghana News, told
CPJ.

“I believe it was his
work on Zairova’s case that prompted the police to seek revenge,” said Nurbek
Toktakunov, another of Askarov’s lawyers. And spring-summer 2010 was, according
to two independent investigations, a time when law enforcement standards had
broken down in southern Kyrgyzstan. The investigations, conducted by the
New York-based Human
Rights Watch and a commission
sanctioned by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe, each found a pattern of
prejudicial law enforcement in the aftermath of the unrest, with ethnic Uzbeks
disproportionately targeted for arrest and imprisonment.

A pattern of bias

Throughout southern Kyrgyzstan, the June 2010 ethnic unrest
claimed the lives of at least 470 people and displaced thousands of others.
Although a June 10 ethnic brawl in an Osh casino marked the beginning of the
violence, tensions had been high since the April 2010 ouster of President
Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Jockeying for power in the ensuing vacuum, Kyrgyz politicians
had courted the support of ethnic Uzbeks, a traditionally apolitical but
economically thriving bloc concentrated in the south. Ethnic Kyrgyz, who hold most
governmental and law enforcement positions in the south, as they do elsewhere
in the country, grew fearful at what they perceived to be the Uzbeks’ newly elevated
political position. In particular, Kyrgyz residents perceived Uzbek-organized
rallies against Bakiyev as calls for southern autonomy.

Ethnic Uzbeks bore a heavier toll during the June violence, both
as victims of violence and detainees held on allegations of committing the
violence, Human Rights Watch reported. “Ethnic Uzbeks constituted the large
majority of victims of the June violence, sustaining most of the casualties and
destroyed homes, but most detainees and defendants—almost 85 percent—were also
ethnic Uzbek,” Human Rights Watch found.
“Of 124 people detained on murder charges, 115 were Uzbek. Taken together with
statements from victims describing law enforcement personnel’s use of ethnic
slurs and focus on the ethnicity of alleged perpetrators and victims during
detention, these statistics raise serious questions about ethnic bias in the
investigation and prosecution of crimes during the June violence.”

No other crime committed in Bazar-Korgon during the June
10-15 unrest was successfully prosecuted, according to accounts from Toktakunov and local human rights
defenders.

CPJ’s research has found that the once-vibrant Uzbek-language media in
southern Kyrgyzstan was virtually
erased in the aftermath of the violence. The morning after clashes erupted
in Osh, the regional government ordered
Osh TV and Mezon TV, independent stations with Uzbek owners, to cease their
broadcasts. Authorities alleged the stations had incited violence; CPJ’s
review found they had covered rallies by ethnic Uzbeks but had not
orchestrated calls for violence. Both stations suffered heavy damage from
unidentified vandals, and Mezon TV never returned to the air. While OshTV did resume broadcasting, it was
ultimately transferred to ethnic Kyrgyz ownership after it faced a series of official
raids, seizures, and detentions.

Despite its declared
commitment to press freedom and the rule of law, the national government has
effectively turned its back on repression in the south and the reported abuses
in the Askarov prosecution. Former President Roza Otunbayeva, who said publicly in
May 2011 that Kyrgyzstan had no persecuted reporters, did not respond during
her tenure to CPJ letters seeking intervention.
Her successor, Almazbek Atambayev, has not responded to renewed calls
for Askarov's release. Kyrgyzstan's Prosecutor
General Aida Salyanova, the country’s top law enforcement official, did not
respond to written questions submitted by CPJ about the case, among them
whether her office has examined reports of police brutality against Askarov.

‘Blame yourself’

Askarov would be arrested on June 15, 2010. He had spent the
two days since the highway confrontation visiting the local hospital, scouring
the streets of Bazar-Korgon, interviewing the wounded, and sharing information
with Moscow- and Bishkek-based journalists and human rights defenders,
including those with the OSCE’s Kyrgyzstan office. Askarov said his dispatches
included details on the movement of arms in the region, and police abuses that
included at least two shootings that he had witnessed. His work was commonly
known. Askarov recalls a local judge, Daniyar Bagishev, encountering him on the
street on June 15 and warning him to stop gathering information on the crisis.
“You are venal and sell these materials for U.S. dollars. But this information
is a state secret and nobody should learn about it,” Askarov remembers the
judge saying. Contacted by CPJ, Bagishev declined to comment.

A half-hour later, a police cruiser arrived at Askarov’s house:
“You need to come with us,” he was told.

Before leaving with police, Askarov said, he managed to slip his
digital camera, with its stored images, into a folder he gave to an
acquaintance. Fearing what might happen
to Askarov, local human rights defenders then scrambled to hide his other reporting
files and move the journalist’s wife and other family members to safety. His
family ultimately left the region.

Once at the local precinct—the
same station where Sulaimanov, the slain police officer, had worked—officials asked for
Askarov’s help in building criminal cases against leaders of the Uzbek
community. “Tell us who of them had guns,” officers demanded, and he refused. They
asked him for his camera and reporting materials, and he lied about their location.
Officials soon took Askarov into custody. “Blame yourself,” Askarov recalls
being told. Thus began an ordeal in which police officers repeatedly beat Askarov and told him they would rape his wife and daughter if he refused
to hand over his reporting materials. His brother, who came looking for him,
was himself beaten badly, Askarov said.

For Askarov, the
beatings would continue for the next three days, during which he was denied
access to a lawyer. The journalist told CPJ that officers beat him with a gun, baton,
and a water-filled plastic bottle. Once, he recalled, he was beaten so badly
that he fell unconscious. “After I stood up, they made me sing the Kyrgyz
anthem even though I was barely alive. Next, they took me to an investigator’s
room, where a police agent named Nurbek hit me with his gun handle in the head.
My head was bleeding like a slaughtered chicken,” Askarov told CPJ.

After Toktakunov, the
defense lawyer, was finally allowed to see his client, he took a statement in
which Askarov said he had been beaten by police and needed medical treatment. But
the journalist was soon coerced into recanting. “Police threatened to strangle
me with a pillow at night if I did not withdraw my request for a medical exam,”
Askarov told CPJ. “I had no other choice.” Questioned about the abuse by a CPJ representative at a May 2011 meeting in New York, Kyrgyzstan diplomatic officials and presidential aides
asserted that Askavov had been beaten by a cellmate. Police would hold Askarov
in the local precinct, among Sulaimanov’s inflamed colleagues, for more than a
month, contrary to a law that requires detainees to be moved to a Ministry of
Justice facility within 10 days.

According to Human Rights Watch and Askarov’s own account, the beatings
continued even as trial proceedings began in September 2010. In one instance,
Askarov told CPJ, “three policemen beat me like a soccer ball outside the
courtroom, saying that I was too intelligent and was not letting them prosecute
me.” Toktakunov was himself assaulted—in the presence of court officials—by
relatives of the slain police officer. Human Rights Watch said the judge called for order in the
courtroom but “did not warn or discipline any of the abusive spectators.”

Askarov has suffered “severe
and lasting” effects from the brutality, according to Sondra S. Crosby, a
physician whose clinical practice at Boston University School of Medicine
focuses on torture. Crosby, hired by the Open Society Justice Initiative, which
is helping prepare Askarov’s U.N. complaint, examined Askarov in jail in
December 2011, more than a year after most of the abuse occurred. She found
that he “appears to have suffered severe and lasting physical injuries as a
result of his arrest and incarceration. His description of acute symptoms, as
well as chronic physical and psychological symptoms, his physical examination,
and his psychological evaluation, are all highly consistent with his
allegations of trauma.”

Thin and disputed
evidence

The trial would bring
no relief for Askarov. As proceedings were getting under way, a regional
prosecutor told the journalist he should forget about the due process he often
cited in his news reports, Askarov told CPJ. “We will prosecute you according
to other laws,” the prosecutor said.

Askarov was tried in Bazar-Korgon
District Court alongside seven co-defendants.
All faced charges of inciting disorder; four were directly charged with Sulaimanov’s
murder. All would be found guilty, including Askarov, who was convicted of
complicity to murder, attempt to take hostage, incitement to ethnic hatred,
participation in mass disorder, and possession of ammunition. Although some
co-defendants had made self-incriminating statements, none implicated Askarov in any wrongdoing.

The murder-complicity
case against Askarov was based on testimony from Sulaimanov’s fellow officers who
were dispatched to clear the highway of protesters at about 8 a.m. on June 13,
2010. Confronted by an angry crowd that was several hundred strong, the
officers quickly retreated but Sulaimanov was not among them. Assailants
stabbed him several times and burned his body with a Molotov cocktail, the
verdict said. No police officer testified as having witnessed the killing,
which was believed to have occurred at about 8:30 a.m.

But seven officers,
including the Bazar-Korgon police chief, told the court they saw Askarov in the
crowd beforehand calling on the protesters to “kidnap the police chief and kill
the others.” Six other police officers testified against the co-defendants, but
they either did not place Askarov at the scene or told the court that another
man had made the calls to violence, the verdict said.

By his own account, Askarov
said he showed up at the highway well after the crime was committed. An investigation
commissioned by the government’s ombudsman’s office, which oversees human
rights issues, concluded that Askarov was not at the scene prior to the murder and
played no role in the officer’s killing. The ombudsman’s office said it reached
its conclusion after interviewing witnesses and local officials, and reviewing
investigative reports.

The attempted hostage case was built on the accusation of
the local mayor, who said the alleged crime took place on June 12, 2010, near
the Uzbekistan border, as the official was trying to stop ethnic Uzbek residents of Bazar-Korgon from seeking refuge in the
neighboring country. Mayor Kubatbek Artykov alleged that Askarov called on
“unidentified” people in the crowd to take him hostage, an account that only two
mayoral aides could corroborate. No actual hostage-taking attempt took place,
according to the verdict. Askarov confirmed that he talked to the mayor that
day, but only to ask if the official could guarantee the safety of the Uzbek villagers.
He said the mayor refused.

The defense also
disputes the reported search of Askarov’s home, during which investigators
claimed to have found 10 bullets for a Makarov pistol. Investigators failed to
produce in court any witnesses to the seizure, a step required under Kyrgyz law,
and they failed to seal the bullets as evidence, which is also required. No
pistol was found. “They made up that police report to lock him up longer,”
Toktakunov told CPJ.

Atmosphere of hostility,
intimidation

The defense has
argued that investigators failed to take statements from any witness who would
have spoken on Askarov’s behalf, including neighbors who witnessed him at home
during the time the police officer was killed, and a mullah who witnessed the
journalist’s encounter with the mayor. The overall climate of fear and
intimidation, coupled with authorities’ inaction in response to attacks against
the defendants and their lawyers, made it impossible for defense witnesses to testify
on their own initiative, Toktakunov told CPJ. “Authorities refused to guarantee
any protection for the witnesses, and I could not risk bringing anyone to
court,” he said. One potential character witness considered testifying despite
the risk, he said, but dropped out after receiving threats against her family.

In an appeal to the Kyrgyzstan Supreme Court, Toktakunov cited
a “lack of impartiality” at trial. He noted that his request for a change in
venue for the trial was rebuffed despite the widespread ethnic hostilities in
southern Kyrgyzstan at the time. Judge Nurgazy Alimkulov failed to inquire about
the evident bruising on Askarov’s face, and did not discipline those in the
courtroom who attacked and threatened the defendants, Toktakunov noted. The atmosphere
prevented Askarov from getting a fair trial, he wrote. “In conditions of fierce
moral and psychological pressure, defense lawyers in the case had to fulfill
their duties with great caution, at times declining to use certain resources.
For example, all of the defendants’ lawyers decided not to bring defense
witnesses to court because the court authorities could not guarantee their
safety.”

Kyrgyzstan's Supreme
Court rejected Askarov’s appeal
following a hearing that the defendant was not allowed to attend.

Domestic appeals
exhausted, defense lawyers are preparing a complaint to be filed with the U.N.
Human Rights Committee, arguing that Kyrgyzstan violated Askarov's rights under
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—in particular, his
right to liberty and security, his right to a fair trial, and his right not to
be subjected to torture. Among the complaint’s central points: Police tortured
Askarov in custody; authorities failed to investigate the abuse or grant Askarov
independent medical treatment; authorities denied Askarov access to an attorney
and failed to provide him sufficient time to prepare a defense. The complaint
is expected to ask the U.N. body to recognize the injustices Askarov suffered,
call for his immediate release, and seek an investigation into the abuse that would
lead to the punishment of those responsible. In addition, the lawyers will ask
the Human Rights Committee to demand that Kyrgyzstan introduce systemic safeguards
to prevent similar violations from happening in the future.

Askarov and his
lawyers also hope that Kyrgyz authorities will, on their own, revisit the case
based on statements from numerous witnesses who have agreed to testify if their
safety can be ensured. In statements collected by defense lawyers and made
available to CPJ, at least five people said they saw the journalist at home at
the time of the police officer’s killing. Askarov’s lawyers said they are
collecting statements from another two dozen witnesses who dispute the other
allegations.

“He is imprisoned,” one neighbor’s statement said, “for
nothing.”

Muzaffar Suleymanov is
the research associate for CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program. He was a
contributor to CPJ’s 2009 report, “Anatomy of Injustice,” an examination of
unsolved journalist murders in Russia.

CPJ’s recommendations

To the president of Kyrgyzstan:

Take all legal steps necessary to ensure that
Azimjon Askarov is released and his conviction overturned.

Publicly call for a timely, thorough, and
professional investigation into attacks against the press.

Publicly call for national law enforcement agencies,
security services, and prosecutors to comply strictly with national and
international laws on press freedom, human rights, and prevention of torture
and other forms of cruel treatment against detainees.

Carry out a review of interior ministry officers
and prosecutors in conjunction with the Kyrgyz ombudsman’s office and human
rights activists, and make the findings public.

End persecution of the independent,
Uzbek-language press.

To the Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Justice, General
Prosecutor’s office:

Launch an open and thorough investigation into the
torture of Askarov, his brother, and co-defendants in the case, and bring all
those responsible to justice; conduct the probe in compliance with the Istanbul
Protocol’s guidelines on Effective Investigation and Documentation of
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Ensure that Askarov’s co-defendants are given
the opportunity to appeal unjust verdicts and that the process is transparent
and conforms to Kyrgyz law and international standards.

Ensure that Uzbek-language media representatives
are given the opportunity to appeal unjust verdicts and the forced sale of
their outlets, and that the process is transparent and conforms to Kyrgyz law
and international standards.

To the United Nations Human Rights Committee:

Admit and review Askarov’s
case.

Press Kyrgyz authorities
to unconditionally fulfill national and international commitments to press
freedom and human rights.

To the U.S. government, European Union, and OSCE:

Publicly call on the Kyrgyz government to release
Askarov immediately and unconditionally.

Encourage Kyrgyz authorities to fulfill their
domestic and international commitments to human rights and free expression as a
basis for mutual political dialogue.

To donor agencies, including USAID, World Bank, and the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development:

Insist on compliance with international
standards for press freedom and human rights as the basis for continued
economic cooperation with the Kyrgyz government.